


No Place Like Home

by Northland



Category: Windrose Chronicles - Barbara Hambly
Genre: F/M, Mages, Post-Canon, Winter, Wizards, Yuletide 2011, school of magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northland/pseuds/Northland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He also says you come from another world... Don't you miss it?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Place Like Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labellerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labellerose/gifts).



Even in woollen half-gloves, Joanna's hands were numb. The ink had congealed into something like jello, and poking at it with her quill did nothing to liquefy it. She sighed, threw the quill down on the table, and tried to rub some feeling back into her stiff fingers. Ball-point pens: one more item added to her list of Things Wizards Really Ought To Look Into, sub-division Office Supplies.

From the other side of the writing table, Zake looked up with hopeful eyes. "Does this mean we can take a break?" The words escaped as mist on his breath.

"Fine, fine." Joanna waved at the senior student irritably. "Go ask Pothatch if we can have more coal for the stove." Lately the Council of Wizards wasn't quite as poor as it had been, but its funds still didn’t stretch to heating every room in the Citadel all day long.

Zake scraped his stool back from the table and headed down the stairs, followed by the ball of witchlight that had helped to illuminate their work. Overhead, the tall vaults of the room were suddenly dim and grey with only the weak midwinter sun coming through the windows.

Joanna stretched, cracking her spine and flexing her fingers. She'd never pictured herself as a librarian, but she'd needed something to do in the Citadel, so here she was, working in a library like something out of a fantasy novel. She always thought of Gandalf in the archives of Minas Tirith when she was up here... though she figured he, at least, had been able to keep himself warm. This wasn't a make-work project, either; the Council desperately needed someone to manage the ceiling-high shelves that were bowed under the weight of iron-clasped books and tottering piles of loose manuscripts. As a former programmer, Joanna had some grasp of how to organize and index information, and her lack of magical talent didn't much matter in this job once she'd learned how to read Ferryth. The only drawback was that she always needed a student partner in case one of the books turned out to be dangerous.

Joanna shuffled down the stairs after Zake, her fingers leaving dark trails in the silver skin of hoarfrost on the stone wall. She could have made tea over the spirit stove in Antryg's workroom, but she wanted to eat something hot--or at least lukewarm. There might be barley porridge in the kitchen, and it was always the warmest place in the Citadel thanks to the great red-mouthed ovens that never died out.

Only Pothatch the cook and a few of the youngest students were in the cavernous room. Brunus was chopping turnips, Maya was brewing tea, and the third was Fee. The youngest student mage in a hundred years, a skinny eight-year-old, sat practicing her runes at a table near the largest stove. Ink spattered from her brush as her arm swept over the paper with more force than subtlety.

"I gave Zake a scuttle and sent him to the storeroom to fill it. By the time you've finished your tea it should be warmer up there." Pothatch winked. "There's even honey this week, thanks to the Regent." He slapped a ladle of barley porridge into a bowl and handed it to Joanna, along with a mug of tea.

"Bless you," she sighed. And bless Pella. After the birth of two healthy heirs, Pharos was so delighted with his wife he had showered her with gifts: manors, jewels, horses... and she'd been wise enough to choose that moment to ask him to forgive the mages. She'd been successful, in part; the Regent still refused to lift their banishment from the cities, but he had resumed paying the Council its subsidy from the Imperial treasury.

"Hello, Joanna!" Fee waved her brush, flicking ink over the table and her face. A less intimidating child was hard to imagine, but Joanna had seen her, on impulse, halt a rockslide to save a herd of goats. And for some reason, out of a fortress full of powerful mages teaching her astonishing things, Fee had chosen Joanna as her favourite person to talk to.

Joanna sat down at the other end of the table and tried to stir her porridge. The spoon stuck fast. Well, Pothatch's porridge was always on the chewy side, but the honey definitely helped. "How are the runes going?" She nodded at the crumpled paper by Fee's elbow.

"Oh-kay." The girl enunciated each syllable clearly. "Did I say that right?"

Joanna smiled into her bowl. "Yes, exactly."

"The Archmage says I need to draw each one a thousand times, and then I'll have made a good start." Fee's expressive face said clearly what she thought of that.

"I'm sure he's right." Joanna knew Antryg considered it a miraculous chance that the Council had been the first to hear of the Kymil street child who could call the lightning. He said that Fee was more powerful than he had been at that age. If she'd been discovered by an unscrupulous dog wizard, or born only a few years earlier and encountered Suraklin in his prime... Joanna pulled her robe more tightly around her and bent over her teacup, inhaling the warm steam.

Fee sidled closer, dragging her sleeve through the ink drops on the table. "He also says you come from another world."

"I do." Joanna, an only child who'd never spent much time around younger kids, was still thrown off by Fee's sudden conversational u-turns.

"And Brunus says you can't ever go back."

Joanna cleared her throat. "Not right now, no."

“Don’t you miss it?” Fee's clear brown eyes, like peat-stained water, seemed guileless.

“I miss the people I knew. My friend Ruth. And there are some luxuries I miss, like movies on cable...” Fee cocked her head curiously and Joanna went on quickly, before she could demand an explanation of the motion picture industry and cable television. “But I came to be with Antryg, and as long as we’re together I don't mind.”

“Would you go back, if you could?” Fee asked, with a child’s unerring way of piercing straight to the issue Joanna least wanted to think about.

“Maybe.” Joanna concentrated on prying another spoonful of porridge out of her bowl, hoping to deflect further questions. None of the mages had yet been successful in finding a way to cross the Void that didn't allow dangerous abominations to slip through, and so such travel was forbidden by the Council except for the gravest reasons. Phormion Starmistress, inspired by Joanna’s account of the telephone, was trying to build something she insisted on calling a 'thaumaturgic ventriloquist,' but her prototype didn't work yet either. Antryg said only that their worlds, which had been strangely synchronized for some time, were beginning to drift apart.

"I'm sorry if I was rude," Fee blurted. Joanna looked up, to find the girl studying her with a frown pinching her small brows together. "Master Bentick is always telling me to think before I speak. But not the Archmage," she added.

Joanna smiled reluctantly. "Probably because he never does it himself."

Fee slid closer on the bench and ducked her head under Joanna's arm. "Well, I'm glad you're here. And I hope you stay." After a moment, Joanna lifted her hand and awkwardly stroked the girl's dark hair.

*

Joanna woke slowly, trying to stay submerged under the surface of sleep as long as possible. The bedroom was still dark, for the sun wouldn't drag itself above the horizon for another hour. Her nose was a chip of ice, but everything below her neck was deliciously warm. Beside her Antryg radiated heat, and snores. Fysshe, the chunky grey cat who had adopted them, was another circle of warmth next to her knees.

She squirmed out of bed, trying to allow as little frigid air as possible to trickle under the covers. Antryg mumbled and turned over. Fysshe opened one eye to glare at her and settled his tail closer around his nose. The socks she'd worn to bed were no match for the glacial slab of the stone floor. Joanna hopped from foot to foot, mouthing silent curses. Central heating was already on the list of Things Wizards Really Ought to Look Into, but she bumped it up another notch in priority. She grabbed her thick wool outer robe from a hook on the wall and rooted under the bed for her sheepskin slippers. Once she'd jammed her feet into them, standing still was almost bearable.

"I overheard something of what Fee said to you yesterday."

Joanna jumped. "Of course you did." Like a cat, Antryg was sure to turn up just when you were sure he was elsewhere, or it was least convenient. She turned and glared at him.

He lifted one corner of the covers. "Come back to bed." Joanna kicked her slippers off but kept the robe on and slid into the warm circle of his arms, resting her head on his chest. One flyaway thread of his tangled hair tickled her cheek. She could feel his chest hitch underneath her as he gathered his breath to speak, and then stopped: once, twice. Finally he said, "Are you certain you don't want to go back to L.A., Joanna? I have the time to do pure research again these days. Phormion and I can find a way to communicate through the Void, or I could ask Ninetentwo to keep tabs on you. After all, his Gate is just a machine, it ought to work just as well in a world without magic.”

Joanna snorted at the thought of the alien appearing in L.A., no doubt to be taken for a special effect off the set of the latest monster movie. “You know I’m staying. Quit trying to get rid of me.”

"I didn't want you to have to leave your home."

“It’s not,” she told his ribs. “Yes, there are people I miss, but my home is wherever you are. You crossed into another universe for me, twice--”

“Well, it was that or be executed,” Antryg pointed out diffidently.

Joanna pushed herself up on one elbow and put her hand over his lips. “You were still leaving behind everything you’d ever known. And yes, someday I expect you to work things out so that we can go back and forth across the Void in perfect safety, with no chance of abominations escaping--"

"You have a disturbing amount of faith in me," he murmured against her fingers.

She gave him a stern look. "In the meantime, I want both of us to stay on the same side of it.”

Antryg opened his mouth again. Joanna slid her hand away and kissed him; that had proven a much better way to keep him quiet.

In fact, neither of them spoke for quite a while. Eventually Fysshe, insulted, got up and stalked away to find a more comfortable place to sleep.

* * *

I hope you enjoy this, labellerose! In your prompt you wondered if Joanna & Antryg might ever have children. Somehow, I can't see them as biological parents, but that made me think about other ways of parenting, especially for those who are teachers or mentors. Also, I worked out a whole backstory in my head for how Joanna & Antryg got to this point, but ran out of time to write it down. Maybe in the New Year...


End file.
